On Friday April 27th the 3rd Annual MA Disability Mentoring Day (DMD) was held at UMass Medical School on both campuses. There was a total of eight mentees and our IT department had the privilege of mentoring three of them.

The event, organized with the help of Work Without Limits and UMMS HR department, provides the platform that matches people with disabilities (mentees) with working professionals (mentors) who share their experience and provide guidance to their mentees.

For this year’s event our three mentees were Christina Scott, Michael Leonard, and Christian Lutbert. From the start they all seemed to enjoy their time with our IT family - getting to know our colleagues from different teams, groups, and leaning about the different types of jobs within IT.

However, jobs titles and responsibilities weren’t the only topics that we went over with them. Along with representatives from HR, we all shared how to prepare for an interview, focusing on the importance of not only on hard skills but also soft/people skills. Some of us shared our personal stories of how we got to where we are, how we have stumbled, and how we picked ourselves back up and succeeded.

Before leaving South St., Christina and Michael, had the chance to use a Virtual Reality headset, which seemed a lot of fun for them. Furthermore, at the Medical School, Christian got to meet Sujitha Chandra Kumar, who was an Intern in IT and is now an employee.

We were all happy to be part of Disability Mentoring Day. Initiatives such as this not only allow us the chance to provide guidance to our mentees, but also learn ourselves how to be better mentors and give back to the community.

Thank you everyone that helped and made Disability Mentoring Day happen! We are looking forward to taking part again next year.

About our mentees:

Michael is a Computer Science Major with a Minor in Management Information Systems. He graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University last May and is currently looking for a job in the IT field to satisfy his computer science skills.

Christina is a hard worker and loves to work with a team and bring motivation. She is a junior in college at Framingham State University, studying marketing, and a huge sports fan.

Christian is a wonderful young man who will be graduating from Quinsigamond College this month with a degree in Computer Science. He likes helping others and would like to find a job that allows him to do this as well as become self-sufficient.

If you would like to learn more about Disability Mentoring Day please visit here: